What did you learn from practice today? Exploring experiences from a Danish R&D effort in digital construction

The Architecture-Engineering-Construction (AEC) industry has been slow in turning the potential of Information and Communication Technologies into greater efficiency and productivity. This is a phenomenon which can be observed in many countries, and in Denmark this issue has been recognized as a major problem for the further development of the AEC industry. The public-private and nationally funded R&D program ‘Digital Construction’ was initiated in 2003 to establish a common platform for exchanging digital information and stimulating digital integration in the Danish AEC industry. This paper reports on the lessons learned from developing strategies, demands and guidelines in the ‘Digital Construction’ program and from adapting one of its ‘digital foundations’, the ‘3D Working Method’, to the design process of the large-scale building project ‘The Icelandic National Concert and Conference Centre’. The explorations are based on a process evaluation of the R&D program and a qualitative case study of the building project. The paper reports on identified factors enabling or hindering the adaptation, as well as on the benefits and challenges experienced from using and exchanging 3D object models according to the ‘3D Working Method’. The paper concludes that the adaptation has been successful due to the initial ambitions of the project actors. Nevertheless, there are still many challenges to be overcome. The findings indicate that the introduction of the ‘3D Working Method’ to the real-life project depended on the success of balancing an array of the factors identified across the R&D program and the different levels within the building project. Three especially crucial balancing acts are explored; first, the power of the ‘implementer’ versus the expected risk and benefits of implementation, second, the strategies and guidelines within the program versus the resources for learning and the organizational traditions for using digital tools, and third, the level of ambition versus the skills of the users and the potential of the technology to address real-life practice. Mastering these balancing acts requires a broad understanding of both the project and its context. The findings from qualitative and holistic studies as presented in this paper are valuable for building such understanding, and for further learning and improvement regarding strategies for integrating ICT in architectural and engineering practice.     

Development of a scale for fantasy state in digital games

Digital games appear to motivate players intrinsically. Of various game features, fantasy in particularly plays a crucial role in enhancing motivation and is a key factor in immersion in gameplay. As with its inherent value, fantasy also plays a vital role in distinguishing digital games itself from other media. Despite its significance, fantasy has received little attention, and this concept is still ambiguous to define with any certainty. This study thus aims to create a framework to explore a dimension of fantasy and to develop a scale to measure a state of fantasy in digital games. As a result, four factors were extracted, which were ‘identification’, ‘imagination’, ‘analogy’, and ‘satisfaction’, to account for fantasy state in digital gameplay. Based on these factors, a fantasy scale in digital games (FSDGs) included 16 items was developed.     

Using digital technologies to redress inequities for English language learners in the English speaking mathematics classroom

This study examined the question, ‘What is the impact of a digital math intervention on secondary ELL students’ mathematical capabilities and perceptions of their future possibilities?’ The hypothesis was that through its direct effect on increasing students’ math ability and its indirect effect on increasing students’ perceived math self-efficacy, the digital intervention affects students’ perceptions of their functionings and future possibilities. A path analysis, with qualitative data nested into the design, was used to analyze the conceptualized relationships. The study was conducted with 50 ninth-and-10th-grade Hispanic students in a Colorado high school, over 6 months. The primary finding was that through its direct effect on increasing students’ math ability and its indirect effect on increasing students’ perceived math self-efficacy, the digital intervention improved students’ perceptions of their functionings and future possibilities. What this study specifically underscores is the importance of taking a coherent and purposeful approach toward the design of digital student-directed educational technology, especially for ELL students who may have specific learning needs.     

Teaching–learning-based optimization: A novel method for constrained mechanical design optimization problems

A new efficient optimization method, called ‘Teaching–Learning-Based Optimization (TLBO)’, is proposed in this paper for the optimization of mechanical design problems. This method works on the effect of influence of a teacher on learners. Like other nature-inspired algorithms, TLBO is also a population-based method and uses a population of solutions to proceed to the global solution. The population is considered as a group of learners or a class of learners. The process of TLBO is divided into two parts: the first part consists of the ‘Teacher Phase’ and the second part consists of the ‘Learner Phase’. ‘Teacher Phase’ means learning from the teacher and ‘Learner Phase’ means learning by the interaction between learners. The basic philosophy of the TLBO method is explained in detail. To check the effectiveness of the method it is tested on five different constrained benchmark test functions with different characteristics, four different benchmark mechanical design problems and six mechanical design optimization problems which have real world applications. The effectiveness of the TLBO method is compared with the other population-based optimization algorithms based on the best solution, average solution, convergence rate and computational effort. Results show that TLBO is more effective and efficient than the other optimization methods for the mechanical design optimization problems considered. This novel optimization method can be easily extended to other engineering design optimization problems.     

Digital circles of support: Meeting the information needs of older people

The UK Government strategy for aging in the 21st Century challenges conceptions of older people as passive recipients of care and promotes their engagement as active citizens. The strategy includes a commitment to test services which embody these principles with a range of innovative pilot projects. This paper summarises research on older people’s information needs and use which informed the design for one of these projects, Leeds Link-Age Plus. The research explored the complex circumstances around which older people access and use social and community information – a topic that has received limited attention in the literature. The paper is novel in considering how the use of informal networks for securing information, advice and advocacy can be supported by technology literate mediators, who may be older people, located within local community or voluntary organisations. Emphasising the mediator in design facilitates social contacts, directly addresses issues of trust and can reduce the chance of causing distress dealing with complex information. A model is suggested for using emerging technology to introduce new ways in which information for older adults can be improved by digital ‘circles of support’ – a form of social network where mediators collaborate to create and share self-authored content.     

Digital Underlife in the Networked Writing Classroom

This article offers a theoretical framework for ‘digital underlife’: the distal and potentially transgressive discursive activities proliferated by emerging technologies. Digital underlife is an adaptation of sociologist Erving Goffman's concept of underlife, which figured centrally in Robert Brooke's well-known study of writing activity in 1988. As emerging digital technologies fray the communicative bounds of traditional sites for teaching and learning, such as the classroom and the conference hall, we are confronted anew with a complex array of possibilities for giving and getting attention. Drawing on the work of Charles Moran and Richard Lanham, this article calls for a more receptive disposition toward the productive dimensions of digital underlife. The article promotes a stance that imagines productive digital underlife to be intrinsic to curricula that combine digital writing activity and rhetorical education, rather than short-selling digital underlife as mere distraction, as an impediment to learning, or worse, attempting to banish it altogether.     

Digital boundary tracking

In many three-dimensional imaging applications, the three-dimensional space is represented by an array of cubical volume elements (voxels) and a subset of the voxels is specified by some property. Objects in the scene are then recognised by being components of the specified set and individual boundaries are recognised as sets of voxel faces separating objects from components in the complement of the specified set. This paper deals with the problem of algorithmic tracking of such a boundary specified by one of the voxel faces lying in it. The paper is expository in that all ideas are carefully motivated and introduced. Its original contribution is the investigation of the question of whether the use of a queue (of loose ends in the tracking process which are to be picked up again to complete the tracking) is necessary for an algorithmic tracker of boundaries in three-dimensional space. Such a queue is not needed for two-dimensional boundary tracking, but published three-dimensional boundary trackers all make use of such a thing. We prove that this is not accidental: under some mild assumptions, a boundary tracker without a queue will fail its task on some three-dimensional boundaries.     

School subject paradigms and teaching practice in lower secondary Swedish schools influenced by ICT and media

This article deals with how school subjects’ paradigms, i.e. the established content of the teaching and the way in which the teaching is traditionally organised, are influenced when digital media are becoming increasingly common in educational contexts. The study is based on interviews in so-called focus groups with teachers of different school subjects in a Swedish lower secondary school about issues concerning how much they use media and ICT in their teaching and how they think this affects the content of their subject, relations in the classroom, working methods and the role of the teacher. The theoretical point of departure is Basil Bernstein’s concepts of ‘recontextualisation’, ‘framing’, ‘classification’, and ‘the sacred and the profane’. The study shows that the teachers in the lower secondary school where the investigation was conducted use so-called new media to a relatively limited extent but that they are ready to develop their use if resources are made available. They also think that the content, working methods, relations and the role of the teacher are changing, usually for the better. Drawing on Durkheim’s concepts of ‘the sacred’ and ‘the profane’ it appears in this study that the sacred in schools is often associated with the physical and practical.     

Design with part behaviors: behavior model, representation and applications

A part is primarily characterized by its ‘function(s)’. The function of the part is achieved through its ‘interactions’ with other parts in an assembly under a set of operating conditions. These ‘interactions’ constitute the ‘behavior’ of the part. The ‘part behavior’ is achieved through a set of spatial and design functional relationships between the interacting surfaces of the parts. The set of spatial and design functional relationships for a part constitutes the Part Function Model (PFM) of that part. In this paper, the nature and role of part ‘functions’ and ‘behaviors’ have been studied in the context of a product design system. The paper addresses the following issues: (i) relationship between function, behavior, and geometry of a part; (ii) importance of ‘part behavior’ over ‘part function’, and development of a ‘part behavior’ model; (iii) methodology for transforming the part behaviors into the PFM model of the part; (iv) product model framework for storing the PFM model information with an Object Oriented Programming (OOP) based CAD system (Concentra's Concept Modeller); (v) importance of the PFM model within the product development process; and (vi) application of the PFM model for generating various product specifications of the part. The prototype implementation of a Functional Design System for transforming part behaviors into different types of part specifications has also been presented in this paper.     

Teachers' acceptance and use of an educational portal

In this study, teachers' acceptance and use of an educational portal is assessed based on data from two sources: usage data (number of logins, downloads, uploads, reactions and pages viewed) and an online acceptance questionnaire. The usage data is extracted on two occasions from the portal's database: at survey completion (T1) and twenty-two months later (T2). Framework for this study is C-TAM-TPB (Combined Technology Acceptance Model and Theory of Planned Behavior). 919 usable responses from teachers are obtained. Based on the observed use data at T1, four types of portal users are distinguished: ‘new’ (N = 37), ‘light’ (N = 641), ‘medium’ (N = 201), and ‘heavy’ (N = 40). Path analyses show that all predictor variables in C-TAM-TPB influence teachers' portal acceptance, but their significance level varies depending on the user type. The strongest predictors of behavioral intention to use the portal are attitude (‘new’) and perceived usefulness (‘light’, ‘medium’ and ‘heavy’), with variance explained ranging from .39 (‘medium’) to .71 (‘heavy’). The observed use data show that the portal is primarily used to search for and download material, rather than for sharing material or information. The use data at T2 show that teachers become more efficient in their search behavior and that the majority of the teachers use the portal more frequently. Guidelines are proposed to policymakers and school boards aiming to introduce a similar technology to teachers.     

From physical to digital: a case study of computer scientists’ behaviour in physical libraries

There has been substantial research on various aspects of peoples usage of physical libraries but relatively little on their interaction with individual library artefacts; that is: books, journals, and papers. We have studied peoples behaviour when working in physical libraries, focusing particularly on how they interact with these artefacts, how they evaluate them, and how they interact with librarians. This study provides a better understanding of how people interact with paper information, from which we can draw implications for some requirements of the design of digital libraries, while recognising that the term library is a metaphor when applied to electronic document collections. In particular, improved communication with other library users and with librarians could facilitate more rapid access to relevant information and support services, and structuring information presentation so that users can make rapid assessments of its relevance would improve the efficiency of many information searches.     

An approach to competitive product line design using conjoint data

In today’s highly competitive environment, where market oriented firms aim to maximize profits through customer satisfaction, there is an increasing need to design a product line, rather than a single product. The main goal of designing a profit maximizing product line is to target the ‘right product’ to the ‘right customer’. Although conjoint analysis has turned out to be one of the most widely used techniques for product line design, it falls to explicitly consider retaliatory reactions from competitors. In this paper, we propose a new conjoint-based approach to competitive new product line design, employing the Nash equilibrium concept. The optimal product line design problem for each firm is formulated as a nonlinear integer programming problem. In the absence of a closed-form solution, to compute the Nash equilibrium and to determine the optimal product line, we propose a two-phase procedure: a sequential iterative procedure in the first phase, and backward induction in the second. To solve the optimization problem in each of the iterations of the sequential procedure, we used the branch-and-bound method. The proposed approach is illustrated under several scenarios of competition using previously published conjoint data.     

What stimulates teachers to integrate ICT in their pedagogical practices? The use of digital learning materials in education

The question ‘What stimulates teachers to integrate Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in their pedagogical practices?’ was addressed in the context of teachers’ usage of digital learning materials (DLMs). We adopted Fishbein’s Integrative Model of Behavior Prediction (IMBP), to investigate the various relationships between distal and proximal variables and intention. Mediation analysis revealed that the proximal variables attitude, subjective norm, and self-efficacy towards DLMs were significant predictors of teachers’ intention to use DLMs. The contribution of subjective norm, however, was modest. Attitude, subjective norm and self-efficacy mediated the effects of the following three distal variables on intention: previous use of DLMs, perceived knowledge and skills to use DLMs, and colleagues’ usage of DLMs. Persuasive communication and skills based training seem, therefore, appropriate interventions to promote a positive attitude towards DLMs and improve self-efficacy in using DLMs.     

Modelling and solving English Peg Solitaire

Peg Solitaire is a well known puzzle, which can prove difficult despite its simple rules. Pegs are arranged on a board such that at least one ‘hole’ remains. By making draughts/checkers-like moves, pegs are gradually removed until no further moves are possible or some goal configuration is achieved. This paper considers the English variant, consisting of a board in a cross shape with 33 holes. Modelling Peg Solitaire via constraint or integer programming techniques presents a considerable challenge and is examined in detail. The merits of the resulting models are discussed and they are compared empirically. The sequential nature of the puzzle naturally conforms to a planning problem, hence we also present an experimental comparison with several leading AI planning systems. Other variants of the puzzle, such as ‘Fool's Solitaire’ and ‘Long-hop’ Solitaire are also considered.     

Web-based quiz-game-like formative assessment: Development and evaluation

This research aims to develop a multiple-choice Web-based quiz-game-like formative assessment system, named GAM-WATA. The unique design of ‘Ask-Hint Strategy’ turns the Web-based formative assessment into an online quiz game. ‘Ask-Hint Strategy’ is composed of ‘Prune Strategy’ and ‘Call-in Strategy’. ‘Prune Strategy’ removes one incorrect option and turns the original 4-option item into a 3-option one. ‘Call-in Strategy’ provides the rate at which other test takers choose each option when answering a question. This research also compares the effectiveness of three different types of formative assessment in an e-Learning environment: paper-and-pencil test (PPT), normal Web-based test (N-WBT) and GAM-WATA. In total, 165 fifth grade elementary students (from six classes) in central Taiwan participated in this research. The six classes of students were then divided into three groups and each group was randomly assigned one type of formative assessment. Overall results indicate that different types of formative assessment have significant impacts on e-Learning effectiveness and that the e-Learning effectiveness of the students in the GAM-WATA group appears to be better. Students in the GAM-WATA group more actively participate in Web-based formative assessment to do self-assessment than students in the N-WBT group. The effectiveness of formative assessment will not be significantly improved only by replacing the paper-and-pencil test with Web-based test. The strategies included in GAM-WATA are recommended to be taken into consideration when researchers design Web-based formative assessment systems in the future.     

Unification of independent and sequential procedures for decentralized controller design

This paper is concerned with decentralized control problems. There are two typical procedures to design decentralized controllers, ‘independent’ and ‘sequential’ design procedures. As the concepts and the techniques in these two approaches are too different from each other, there have been no attempts to unify these approaches. This paper proposes an iterative independent design procedure for decentralized control systems, which is a unified approach to these conventional approaches.     

RelaxMCD: Smooth optimisation for the Minimum Covariance Determinant estimator

The Minimum Covariance Determinant (MCD) estimator is a highly robust procedure for estimating the centre and shape of a high dimensional data set. It consists of determining a subsample of h points out of n which minimises the generalised variance. By definition, the computation of this estimator gives rise to a combinatorial optimisation problem, for which several approximate algorithms have been developed. Some of these approximations are quite powerful, but they do not take advantage of any smoothness in the objective function. Recently, in a general framework, an approach transforming any discrete and high dimensional combinatorial problem of this type into a continuous and low-dimensional one has been developed and a general algorithm to solve the transformed problem has been designed. The idea is to build on that general algorithm in order to take into account particular features of the MCD methodology. More specifically, two main goals are considered: (a) adaptation of the algorithm to the specific MCD target function and (b) comparison of this ‘tuned’ algorithm with the usual competitors for computing MCD. The adaptation focuses on the design of ‘clever’ starting points in order to systematically investigate the search domain. Accordingly, a new and surprisingly efficient procedure based on a suitably equivariant modification of the well-known k-means algorithm is constructed. The adapted algorithm, called RelaxMCD, is then compared by means of simulations with FASTMCD and the Feasible Subset Algorithm, both benchmark algorithms for computing MCD. As a by-product, it is shown that RelaxMCD is a general technique encompassing the two others, yielding insight into their overall good performance.     

The impact of synchronous inter-networked teacher training in Information and Communication Technology integration

This paper summarises the outcomes of research that recorded and interpreted change in pre-service teachers’ pedagogical beliefs when immersed in unique synchronous networked collaboration. The pre-service teachers were involved in the design and implementation of synchronous networked tasks, supported by the theoretical and pragmatic application of ‘informed’ Information and Communications Technology (ICT) integration. The pre-service teachers’ use of digital technology graduated from a didactic, broadcast delivery of information to more constructivist strategies that involved interaction, collaboration and ‘good’ learning. Moreover, the pre-service teachers gained competencies during a 12-week programme that led to the development of a suggested framework for ICT task development able to effectively promote and support improvements in learning.     

Safe driving in a green world: A review of driver performance benchmarks and technologies to support ‘smart’ driving

Road transport is a significant source of both safety and environmental concerns. With climate change and fuel prices increasingly prominent on social and political agendas, many drivers are turning their thoughts to fuel efficient or ‘green’ (i.e., environmentally friendly) driving practices. Many vehicle manufacturers are satisfying this demand by offering green driving feedback or advice tools. However, there is a legitimate concern regarding the effects of such devices on road safety – both from the point of view of change in driving styles, as well as potential distraction caused by the in-vehicle feedback. In this paper, we appraise the benchmarks for safe and green driving, concluding that whilst they largely overlap, there are some specific circumstances in which the goals are in conflict. We go on to review current and emerging in-vehicle information systems which purport to affect safe and/or green driving, and discuss some fundamental ergonomics principles for the design of such devices. The results of the review are being used in the Foot-LITE project, aimed at developing a system to encourage ‘smart’ – that is safe and green – driving.